OPD/DVP Highlight Previous Administration Failures After Ceasefire Audit; Pete Drops Appeal, Fife Will Bring BAMBD Strengthening Legislation

OPD and DVP Admins Outline Failures within Previous OPD and DVP Administrations as Departments Vow to Implement Ceasefire Recommendations

On Tuesday, Council members received a Ceasefire audit report and testimony from principals of the California Partnership for Safe Communities [CPSC], the organization that conducted an audit of Oakland’s Ceasefire program. The meeting was also a noteworthy and rare instance of police and other city officials publicly critiquing former administration policy.

Over the past decade, Ceasefire has been given credit for the copious reduction of Oakland gun violence and other forms of crime from around 2013 to 2019, but questions about the program abounded when violent crime again began to return to previous levels in early 2020. The audit, commissioned by incoming Mayor Sheng Thao, provides answers to some of those questions. But comments made during the meeting by Oakland officials also suggested that some of the audit’s findings came as little surprise to administrators at OPD and the Department of Violence Prevention [DVP] who indicated deeper failures in the administration of both departments in past years. Several criticisms of OPD performance focused on former OPD Chief Leronne Armstrong's Violent Crime Operations Center [VCOC], the marquee crime-reduction strategy of his administration introduced in early 2021.

VCOC Forced OPD Captains to "Negotiate with Other Captains" For Officers

In two separate responses to CM questions, for example, Assistant OPD Chief Tony Jones implied that the centralized structure of Armstrong’s VCOC removed control of resources from Area captains, who then lacked the flexibility to be able to respond quickly to crime trends in their specific areas of the city—a criticism that went farther than the audit’s claim that the VCOC drained Ceasefire resources. Jones noted that the approximately 40 officers under the supervision of the VCOC would return not only to their Ceasefire roles, but to the direct command of Area Captains, suggesting in his comments that the VCOC had been counter-productive.

“So each Area Captain will have a team that they can deploy to respond to emergent crime trends immediately, and not have to negotiate with other Captains to get resources to come and help…” Jones told Council members.

Jones bookended the comment with an even more direct critique a few minutes later.

“A centralized enforcement team for geographic accountability just really doesn’t go together. If you have Captains that have to respond things that are occurring and responsible for areas, they need resources to deal with that and they can’t be somewhere else, doing something else, they have to be able to be engaging with the Captain and doing things in real time. It’s difficult to do that when everybody’s in one place, like the VCOC was,” Jones told Council members.

Jones' comments echoed some of those from Reygan Cunningham, a former civilian director of Ceasefire, current co-director of CPSC and audit co-author, who told CMs that the VCOC’s “different philosophy on reducing gun violence” had taken resources away from Area captains.

“This may have been an unintended consequence. Ceasefire was, in the Oakland Police Department, at the center of managing gun violence and when the VCOC was created, the Ceasefire strategy became disconnected from the VCOC…and something similar also happened with the area commanders when their resources as far as crime reduction teams were taken away,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham also noted the shift of the Crime Gun Intelligence Center [CGIC]—one of the key practices of Ceasefire—from Ceasefire to the VCOC. In the VCOC, access to the CGIC resources had to be approved by the Chief of Criminal Investigations Division, not the Assistant Chief where it had been previously readily available for the work of Ceasefire.

Joyner: "I Did Not Think the VCOC was A Good Idea...and Clearly it Wasn't"

Ersie Joyner, a 25 year veteran and former member of the OPD who oversaw Ceasefire and helped conduct the audit as a consultant with CPSC also had direct criticism for the VCOC. Joyner specifically mentioned former Chief Leronne Armstrong and his wife, Drennon Lindsay, OPD’s then and current Deputy Chief and characterized the VCOC as an error in judgment for both.

“In our understanding in our audit and our interviews of staff, it turns out that Chief Leronne Armstrong made a decision strategically to move to the Violence Crime Operations Center…the thought process was, if we catch more people who are doing violent crime, they won’t be out there to help hurt other people. And on top of it, it will keep people from having to retaliate if the person’s held accountable…in theory, that makes perfect sense. It was definitely worth an effort…at that time when it happened, given national best practices and what the strategy was doing, I did not think it was a good idea. As we stand here today, clearly it wasn’t.”

Joyner also named Lindsay as further shaping what became an abrupt break with Ceasefire through her role as Deputy Chief in the Criminal Investigation Division.

“The actual Deputy Chief in the Criminal Investigation Division was Deputy Chief Drennon Lindsay. Her objectives again, increase the clearance rate, help investigators bring closure and importantly grief relief to families that had been victimized in violent crime and at the same time keep violent people off the street from repeating their bad behavior. Again, maybe some might say, the polar opposite of what Ceasefire was doing,” Joyner said.

DVP Chief Joshi: "Audit is a Roadmap as I Walk in the Door"

DVP Chief Holly Joshi outlined for the first time some of the changes she will undertake as incoming DVP head, with attendant reflections on missteps at the DVP as it grew in its scope from 2018 onward. Joshi, who was appointed in late November, called the audit “a roadmap as I walk in the door for how to reorganize the department.”

Joshi agreed with the audit’s criticism of the DVP as a department that became too broad in its focus, targeting neighborhoods and families rather than the individuals most associated with violent crime.

“The Department of Violence Prevention has to prioritize our work specifically with the people that are at the center of violence. We’re too small of a department to be able to address everything. And so in order for us to play a part in Ceasefire and to have a reductions in shootings, homicides and violent crime, we have to be very focused on the 350 to 400 people…less than 1% of our population, and that’s not currently what’s been happening at the Department of Violence Prevention,” Joshi told CMs.

The DVP has been without a chief for nearly a year, since Guillermo Cespedes, who had become synonymous with the department as its first appointed chief, left the role. Cespedes administration has been clouded by accusations of hostile work environment and harassment of women staff, including from his own deputy chief, who Cespedes fired in 2022.

Joshi said that she would be reorganizing the department over the next 6 weeks with the recommendations of the audit, reorganizing the department’s service provision under the Deputy Chief.

According to comments from both Joshi and Jones, some of the audit recommendations appear to have been long-sought within the departments, and will be implemented immediately. Jones told Council that the VCOC would be disbanded as of Saturday, January 20, 2024.

In a tweeted graphic based on a public records request for Ceasefire staffing last week, Oaklandside's news editor, Darwin Bond Graham noted the precipitous decline of Ceasefire staffing after 2019. The graphic suggests that after Ceasefire's police staffing budget was reduced in 2020 by Libby Schaaf in an effort to get ahead of a fiscal cliff caused by police overspending, Ceasefire's police staffing was not returned. It remains unclear if staffing will be returned to previous levels after VCOC is disbanded.

Pete Withdraws Appeal on Tidewater Development on Promise of Amendments; Fife Vows to Pursue Stronger Protections in Black Arts Movement District Legislation at Meeting

Local Black Arts Movement and Business District [BAMBD] business owner Geoffrey Pete withdrew his appeal against the Tidewater Capital development proposed for a parking lot adjacent to his Geoffrey’s Inner Circle club at last Tuesday’s Council meeting. The withdrawal of the appeal—announced at the Council podium by Pete—came as a last minute surprise to attendees and city staff. Even as late as the commencement of Tuesday’s meeting, City staff and Council members clearly expected the tie-breaking vote to move forward at some point in the meeting. Oakland's Assistant City Attorney Ryan Richardson took a moment early in the meeting to explain the process for Mayor Sheng Thao’s tie-breaking vote on the appeal, noting that the meeting would take up where it left off December 19, with votes frozen in place. That meant that both CMs Janani Ramachandran and Treva Reid present at Tuesday’s meeting would be logged as absent for the vote due to their absence on the day of the critical vote last month.

A Mayor has the option of either breaking a tie at the meeting where it occurs, or having the item continued to a future meeting to do so; Thao declined to come to the session in December, which had already stretched to midnight and the meeting was continued to January. The vote was scheduled for around 9 pm Tuesday, the soonest Thao could phone in from a remote location due to travel issues.

But in an unexpected turn, Pete asked to address the body just before the Non Consent Calendar about an hour and a half into the meeting and told Council members he was dropping his appeal. Pete said that his withdrawal was based on an agreement with the City of Oakland to add the amendments proposed by CM Carroll Fife at the previous meeting.

On the podium, Pete addressed his comments mostly to supporters, thanking them for bringing the community together on behalf of his efforts.

“Martin Luther King once said that a man is a fool if he doesn’t realize that his wealth is a part of the commonwealth. No matter where you are in this life, somebody helped you get there…thank you for helping us get there,” Pete said, turning to the audience.

Pete’s criticism of a City planning process skewed toward big developers remained, however.

“This was an unprecedented appeal, a dual appeal against the unjust decision by the City Planners and the Planning Commission of the City of Oakland,” Pete noted.

Fife thanked Pete for his comments and patience and requested to schedule legislation to a future meeting that would strengthen BAMBD where Geoffrey’s Inner Circle is located with funding, grants, streetscape improvements and events.

Fife noted that the legislation created the BAMBD “in name only.” Fife said that McElhaney’s effort to pass the legislation in 2016 was “noble”, but fell short of giving the City of Oakland to create a real cultural district.

“It didn't give the City of Oakland the tools necessary to really enforce what it means to be a cultural district in the City of Oakland,” Fife said in her brief comments while scheduling the item from the dais.

The legislation is tentatively scheduled to be heard at a February 27 Community and Economic Development committee meeting.

At Committees This Week

Several committees have been canceled this week. It’s the second week of significant cancellations for Committees. The reason this matters in the end, is that items from canceled committee agendas invariably end up skipping that committee and going straight to council’s consent calendar, where they get no discussion. The Life Enrichment Committee, Public Safety Committee and Public Works/Transportation Committee have been canceled for the coming week. In the week of 1/9, Finance, Public Works/Transportation, Life Enrichment and Public Safety were also canceled.

This week, the only Committees meeting are Finance and Community and Economic Development.

At the Finance Committee:

—Q1 Revenue and Expenditure report. The report, which predicts another large imbalance and worrisome overtime overages for OPD may already be out of date, with the Q2 report set to be released in the next month or so. Q1 forecasts are notoriously unreliable, but if the numbers come up similarly in the Q2 forecasts, Oakland could be facing a rocky future.

—OPD overtime report. Another held-over item from a previous cancellation, the report focuses on FY 22-23, and thus won’t have a lot of direct information about the current projected FY OPD overtime overage. But there is an addendum that has more drilled down information about the last six months of 2023 which illuminates spending practices.

—Semi-Annual Staffing Report. This item has been held over after cancellations since December. The staffing report finds a vacancy rate of 18%, still one of the highest in the Bay Area. Separations continue to outpace hiring for the fourth year in a row. OPD continues to have one of the lowest vacancy rates as a function of civilian and sworn positions; Oakdot, Housing and Community Services, Parks and Rec and Economic and Workforce Development have among the highest.

—Measure KK Projects Status Update. More on this after the committee meeting.

At the Community and Economic Development Committee:

—Impact Fee Report. the Annual report finds that about two thirds of the 89.5 MM assessed Affordable Housing Impact Fees since 2016 remain unpaid, with imbalances going back to the program’s inception in 2016. The unpaid balances could be due to the permits expiring, or the project completion delayed, as well as failure to pay. More after the meeting.

—$4 MM Loan for 12th St Remainder Project. EBALDC, the original affordable housing provider for “parcel 1” of the 12th street remainder project received a $4 MM loan for the project, referred to as the Ground Rent Loan. Now EBALDC wants to pre-pay that loan all at once, and get another type of loan for the same amount of money that can be used to capitalize and leverage another funding source. It’s cost neutral for the City, apparently, paying one loan back and getting another for the same amount for reasons that are not very clear. More on this after the meeting.